


Eulogy

by youcouldmakealife



Series: Impaired Judgment (and other excuses) [135]
Category: Original Work
Genre: M/M, YCMAL 'verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-12
Updated: 2021-02-12
Packaged: 2021-03-12 13:00:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,148
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29385234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youcouldmakealife/pseuds/youcouldmakealife
Summary: Jared’s worried. Jared’s been concerned for awhile, but it’s been upgraded. He’s worried.
Relationships: OMC/OMC
Series: Impaired Judgment (and other excuses) [135]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/849798
Comments: 56
Kudos: 331





	Eulogy

Bryce keeps up the hot streak, but Jared can’t enjoy it. He swears, it’s like the better Bryce plays, the further away he seems. When he’s home, he’s home, he’s Bryce, goofy and earnest and sweet, but the second play comes up there’s a wall that comes up around him. 

It’s not so much that Bryce is keeping his play from Jared, blocking Jared out, more that he’s keeping Jared away from his career, like some kind of movie cliche, ‘can’t let him know I’m an assassin’ or something dumb like that. Jared points it out, because obviously he does, and Bryce apologises, because obviously he does, but it doesn’t change. Every game, rinse and repeat.

Jared’s worried. Jared’s been concerned for awhile, but it’s been upgraded. He’s worried. Bryce’s play is on fire, and he’s in the playoffs, and his mom’s in town, and, not to sound arrogant, his husband is too, all things Bryce would usually be over the moon about, and Bryce — he’s Bryce, when he turns the game off, when he turns off the hockey brain, but the rest of the time? Bryce is miserable, clings to Jared at night sometimes like he’s the only thing that’s keeping him above water.

Bryce keeps lighting it up, and any fan, any media, anyone who isn’t literally sharing a bed with him would view it as a victory, Bryce Marcus’ head back in the game. But the way Bryce walks into the apartment after home games — he just wants it over.

The Calgary Flames go to the Western Conference Finals for the first time since Jared was a kid. They take it in Colorado, and Bryce comes home in the middle of the night, a little tipsy from victory drinks on the plane, but not like — victorious. Not like he would have been in other years. Happy, sort of. Happy, Jared guesses.

Not really happy, probably.

“Scouts,” Bryce says. Maybe revenge will motivate him a little, though it’s not like he’s not motivated when he’s on the ice, he always looks motivated on the ice. There’s a disconnect in his voice, though, none of the fire there was about them last season, not even the level of bile he still had for them when the Scouts went on to face the Canucks.

“Fucking Scouts,” Jared says.

They only get a day before Bryce is flying out to Kansas City, since the Scouts have already wrapped up their series against the Sharks. Jared spends it reading up on the Scouts, since he hasn’t watched any other series outside of Bryce’s. They’re apparently a juggernaut. Again. Terrific.

Jared has played one series against the Scouts ever, and he is already sick to death of them.

And that’s before Brandon Simcoe scores six points in two games against a stunned still Flames team, scoring goals every fucking time he isn’t slamming Bryce into the boards, or drawing Bryce’s temper out and getting him sent to the box. Jared doesn’t talk to Bryce about it. It’s nothing Bryce hasn’t heard from anyone else, it’s nothing Bryce needs to hear from him specifically. Sometimes a player has your number, sometimes a player has your team’s number.

The previously stellar goaltending’s fallen apart. The D looks frozen out there. The Scouts’ power-play is on fire, and the Flames are giving them no shortage of opportunities, taking weak calls in their desperation to try to turn the tide.

But of course the media’s talking about Bryce’s penalties, talking about how his name isn’t on the scoresheet. The Flames are averaging four goals against. Bryce had a four goal game all of once in his entire career. He’s not the problem. But it’s easier to trash him than a D-corps they knew going in was weak, than a goalie they literally just signed, Jared guesses. Bryce is a visible player, and when he’s not making an impact, you notice. When he’s in the box, you notice, even if he’s never been on the penalty kill in his life. 

Jared has four perfect fingernail bruises in each of his palms when Bryce gets back to Calgary. Bryce has a whole lot more bruises than that, black and blue and dejected. There’s no fire, no ‘we’ll come back from this’, no ‘fuck those guys, we have them’. Bryce comes home, and he unpacks, and he doesn’t talk about the games, doesn’t want to talk about the games, so they don’t talk about the games, and then the Scouts come to town.

Jared can’t watch it at the Saddledome with his dad and Elaine. Can’t watch it at his parents’ with his mom and Erin. Feels like a raw nerve, watching it home alone, nails back in his palms and knees up to his chest. Mutes it about five minutes in and doesn’t turn the sound back on all game. Bryce is stranded out there. He isn’t the only one. The Scouts have come to play, clearly want to clinch the series in Calgary, and the Flames are on the back foot, always following, always trying to make something happen at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and for a team as skilled as the Scouts, it’s an easy win. 

Simcoe has a two point night. So does Williams. Half the Scouts roster seems to have gotten a point in this mess. 

Bryce gets his first goal of the series. No one cares. Not in a 6-1 game. 

Jared uncurls himself from his ball. Turns the TV off. Fiddles with his phone, trying not to look like he’s waiting for Bryce while he waits for Bryce, not wanting to add to any of the stress.

Bryce gets home quick, and Jared doesn’t know if that means the media didn’t go for him, or if he ducked it. He’s not going to ask. 

“Hey,” Jared says, thinks that sounds neutral enough, but Bryce’s face twists.

“I just — I can’t talk about it tonight,” Bryce says.

“Okay,” Jared says. “Whatever you need.”

“I’m gonna take a shower,” Bryce says, and he just had one, hair still damp from it, but Jared gets that it’s different, perfunctory post-game shower to wash the sweat off versus letting himself unknot under the hot water.

The water’s still running a half hour later, and Jared knocks. “You good babe?”

“Fine,” Bryce says. He doesn’t sound fine, but like — that’s his right.

“You still alive in there?” Jared checks when it’s been an hour. 

“Jared, I love you,” Bryce says, barely audible over the water. “But can you _please_ fuck off right now.”

Jared fucks off to the couch, trying not to be offended. Failing, honestly, but like — Bryce needs to be alone right now. He gets it. He doesn’t like it, but he gets it. He doesn’t have to drown himself in shower to do it, Jared has no problem being in a different room if that’s what Bryce needs, but he suspects knocking on the door to tell him that would not be helpful right now.

The water shuts off not long after that, and when Bryce doesn’t come into the living room Jared figures he’s holed up in theirs. Jared blindly flicks through channels, feeling adrift. It’s sort of the same feeling he had in Vancouver, Bryce a thousand kilometres away and Jared unable to do anything for him, but it’s worse in a way, Bryce just down the hall and Jared still unsure what he can do, knowing he can’t fix it, that this isn’t the sort of thing that’s like ‘hey I love you so that makes it all better, right?’. It doesn’t.

The door to their room’s ajar when Jared goes to the bathroom, a tentative invitation, and when Jared peeks his head in Bryce, curled up in bed, gives him a weak smile that Jared thinks counts as one too.

“I’m sorry,” Bryce mumbles when Jared sits at the edge of the bed.

“Don’t be sorry,” Jared says.

Bryce’s eyes are red like maybe he cried it out in the shower. It makes Jared miserable. 

“If you need time alone you can just tell me,” Jared says. “I won’t be offended or anything. I get it.”

“That’s like, all I fucking had in Kansas City,” Bryce mumbles.

“Yeah, well, you’re still allowed to need some,” Jared says.

“I don’t,” Bryce mumbles. “I just — I’m so tired, Jared.”

“I know,” Jared says. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to help.”

Bryce shrugs a bit. “Come here?” he says, and Jared curls into him now that he has the permission, careful to avoid the scrapes and bruises, though there are a lot of them. Colorado was a team that played hard, and the Scouts aren’t as physical, don’t need to be when the puck’s always on their sticks, but they’re not exactly playing soft either. When Simcoe isn’t destroying the Flames’ defence, he’s destroying any player in his path, always with just enough plausible deniability that he’s getting the retaliation calls in response. 

He kisses Bryce’s temple, where his hair’s drying in the loose wave it gets when Bryce doesn’t bother to style it, Jared always a little in love with it just because of its rarity.

“We’re not going to win this series,” Bryce says.

Jared chews his lip. Reverse sweeps aren’t common, but they’re not impossible. Still, the way the Scouts are playing, it’s a fool’s bet.

“Jared,” Bryce says.

“Probably not,” Jared says, because he doesn’t think Bryce needs a pump up speech right now, just acknowledgement.

“Where do you think I should go?” Bryce says.

It’s too early to talk about this, with Bryce still in the playoffs. Down by three in the series, but it’s not the offseason yet. He should be focusing on the present.

“Where do you want to go?” Jared asks.

“I don’t know,” Bryce mumbles. “I want Vancouver not to be impossible.”

“I know,” Jared murmurs. “Me too.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” Bryce whispers, and there’s nothing Jared can say to that, so he just kisses his temple again, runs his fingers through Bryce’s hair, stays there with him as Bryce breathes, quick and unsteady, stays there with him until it slows, evening out, stays a little longer after that.

*

Jared watches Game Four with the TV muted again, not that the Saddledome is any louder. Solemn as church, dad described it last game. Today it’s probably solemn as a funeral, because that’s exactly what it is. Calgary tries. Bryce is running around like he’ll do it himself if he has to, though he doesn’t: the goaltending’s back on form, the D are blocking every single shot the Scouts aim their way, Bryce and Casterley combine for four points between the two of them alone.

They still lose the game.

Bryce goes straight to their room when he gets home, and Jared hesitates for a moment before he follows, finds Bryce in the middle of the bed, everything still on except for his shoes, kicked into the corner of the room.

“Can I be here?” Jared asks.

“Tell me I don’t have to do media tomorrow,” Bryce says.

Jared sighs and sits beside him.

“Just — I know it’s a lie,” Bryce says. “Just tell me it anyway.”

“You don’t have to do media tomorrow,” Jared lies. He does. It’d be a poison pill to any trade if he didn’t, would simultaneously put the final nail in the coffin of his relationship with the Flames and depreciate his trade value to the point they wouldn’t want to ship him out. He has to do media. 

Bryce stares up at the ceiling. He knows all this. Jared knows he knows all that.

Jared puts a hand on his chest, feels Bryce’s heart beat quick beneath his fingers.

“It’s over now,” Jared says.

“It isn’t,” Bryce says. “I still have to walk in there tomorrow.”

“After that, though,” Jared says. “You don’t have to after that.”

Bryce is crying, this silent thing, just tears trickling out of the corners of his eyes like he doesn’t even notice he’s doing it. 

“They hate me,” he says. “The whole fucking — I tried.”

“I know you did,” Jared says.

“I love this city so much,” Bryce says. “But it didn’t do a single fucking thing to earn it except give me you.”

“That’s not fair,” Jared says.

“I don’t care,” Bryce says, shuts his eyes, lashes damp against his cheeks.

“What can I do?” Jared asks.

“I don’t know,” Bryce whispers, and Jared, feeling helpless, lies down beside him, looks up at the ceiling, finds Bryce’s hand and laces their fingers. Bryce squeezes tight, and Jared squeezes right back. 

“Tell me I don’t have to do media,” Bryce says.

“You know you do, B,” Jared murmurs, and pulls Bryce in, arms around his shaking shoulders, when he starts to cry in earnest.


End file.
